The Difficult Art of Simplicity: Medea in Sofia

Our production of Medea, which remains in repertoire at the Ivan Vazov National Theatre, recently received a wonderful review from Savas Patsalidis. We wanted to share it with you below. For more information on the production, including future performances, simply click here.

The Difficult Art of Simplicity: Medea in Sofia

By Savas Patsalidis

One of the recurring problems in contemporary stagings of ancient tragedy is their almost fearful attitude toward simplicity. It is as if directors distrust it, regard it as something inferior, an adversary that must be subdued. Or perhaps they simply confuse it with simplification, which is not the same thing at all. The two are radically different, almost opposite.

Simplicity is the result of painstaking, thoughtful subtraction. It is an achievement. It demands deep understanding of the material and rigorous discipline. It is not a poverty of means; it is precision of intention.

Simplification, on the other hand, is superficial. It does not emerge from process but from the absence of it. It does not refine; it merely fails to go deeper.

The simple distills; the simplistic diminishes.

The simple trusts; the simplistic patronizes.

And yet, despite the communicative power of simplicity, many productions turn away from it and steer toward a vague notion of “complexity” that often results in aesthetic—and not only aesthetic—confusion. As if directors fear that unless they bewilder the audience, they will not impress them. As if obscurity were proof of depth.

While everyone claims that ancient drama was theatre for the many—a deeply popular art form—they often treat clarity as if it were a threat. As though the moment something becomes understandable, it automatically loses its authority and depth. Yet someone ought to remind them that authority and depth are not measured by how difficult a work is to access, but by the way it chooses to pose its questions, even when it offers no promise of answers.

There is nothing harder than conveying complex, dark, painful ideas with clarity and directness. A simple approach to ancient tragedy is in fact the most demanding, and the most “dangerous” because the risk of sliding into reductive simplification is always present.

That is why it requires measure, precision, study, confidence, and above all faith in the force that resides within the text itself, within the energy of its language. If you do not believe in that force, why engage with the text at all, even if your intention is to deconstruct it? Proper deconstruction demands, perhaps even more than faithful interpretation, an intimate understanding of the text’s mind, its internal temperature. Otherwise, you are not deconstructing; you are merely dismantling, demolishing.

I am writing this after seeing Medea at the Ivan Vazov National Theatre, directed by Declan Donnellan of the British company Cheek by Jowl. The production was staged on the main stage, with the audience standing in a circle around the action.

What I saw was a production free of ornament, free of pretension, free of ideological “overlays” used as alibis. It was unmistakably modern, yet sustained by a clarity that ran from beginning to end.

Donnellan brought Medea down from her mythic pedestal to the level of the contemporary spectator’s gaze, not in order to demystify her, but to humanize her, to make her “dangerously” recognizable, with all the questions and unresolved mysteries that such recognition inevitably carries.

Scenographically, there was nothing elaborate. Absolute minimalism. A bare stage with a small platform at its center. One could not help but think of the phrase attributed to Thornton Wilder—that theatre is “two boards and a passion.” When the passion is real, everything else becomes superfluous.

That passion was embodied with extraordinary intensity by Radina Kardzhilova, one of the leading actresses of Bulgaria’s National Theatre. With a physical and emotional force that allowed no safe distance, she moved among the spectators, sharing her pain and rage, dissolving the boundary between stage and audience. You were not simply watching; you were implicated, in a deconstructive, and punishing performative act.

The Chorus, also positioned among the audience, was far from decorative. It functioned as a collective voice, at times warning, at times empathizing, at times hesitating. Much like us.

Donnellan’s production gave us a Medea who felt immediate and contemporary. Unadorned, yet overflowing with rage. A figure of otherness who longs to belong and is met, again and again, with exclusion. And then rage turns into action. Not because she is a monster, but because she is human.

This was a production that felt like a cry against injustice and rejection. Clear. Simple. Direct. And precisely for that reason, deeply political.

Perhaps, in the end, true boldness in staging ancient drama lies not in excess, bombast, spectacular effects, or generous budgets, but in trust: trust in the text and what it reveals—and conceals; trust in the actor; trust in the audience, the final recipient and judge.

And this Medea proved it.